Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Luci and her husband were moving from Oregon to Ohio in 2003 when they encountered something they never expected to see, and now never expect to be without.

“We were severely sleep deprived and on the evening of day two I began to notice something very odd,” Lucy said. At first, she thought she may be hallucinating, but later realized she was not. “I was seeing amorphous, floating, black, cloaked and hooded figures skimming about six inches to a foot off the ground.”

Some of the beings were standing still, but most seemed to be “heading somewhere definite,” Luci said. Some of the shadow people were traveling as fast as the truck her husband drove.

“I saw them here and there every few minutes and I couldn't help but feel disturbed,” she said. “Though I was quite tired, I felt wide awake and everything else I saw looked completely normal.”

As they drove east, the sightings continued, almost like Luci was catching a glimpse of another highway in another realm.

“I was amazed every time I saw another shadow figure,” she said. “Several passed over the highway crossing our path as we drove. For the few hours when this happened, I saw them through dusk, dark, and into the next morning.”

Luci and her husband stopped for a rest that morning after an encounter that was too close to be comfortable.

“Towards dawn one shadow figure passed right through the cab of our moving truck,” Luci said. “I clearly saw the drape of the folds of the encompassing cloak, though the face and head were hidden deep in a cowl. I couldn't help but gasp and pull away, too stunned to worry about how crazy my actions might seem to my husband.”

But he noticed her jump, and Luci was surprised that he knew why.

“He turned and looked at me and said, ‘You saw it too?’” she said. “I was astonished. But at last we were able to compare notes and it seemed we were seeing the same thing. What's more, we were seeing the exact same figures at the exact same time.”

They began pointing out the cloaked, hooded shadow people as they drove, slightly relieved they weren’t going crazy.

“Neither of us had been ingesting any substances or drinking anything but coffee, so these mutual ‘hallucinations’ were perplexing,” Luci said.

“All we could guess was that the lull of the truck engine over hundreds of miles and both of us being sleep deprived made it easier to see beings that were perhaps of the astral plane.”

It was then they began to get nervous.

“When two people start seeing figures of death seemingly everywhere, they might worry for their longevity all of a sudden,” she said. “We pulled off to stop at a motel shortly after we admitted to one another that we were seeing these things.”

The couple arrived in Ohio safely and has lived there since – but their drive through the astral plane seemed to open a door that has remained open for them.

“Since then, my husband and I have both seen these beings a couple of times a year usually just ‘passing through’ our yard or house,” Luci said. “They ignore us for the most part, though once I chased one down and put my hands right through it.”

When Luci’s hands sank into the chest of the shadow person, she felt an “odd, chilled, deep vibration” ripple through her.

“The shadow person stopped when I did this and I got the distinct impression that his kind are not used to being seen, let alone chased down and poked,” Luci said. “But, apparently, they can see us well enough, and ‘feel’ us, too.”Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it at jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author and fan of all things strange. His book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri,” is available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Sparse dark clouds dotted the sky over Chawton, Hampshire, England, on the evening of June 22, 2002 when Ashley Martin stepped outside with his camcorder. In the distance he could see the construction of his sister’s house, but was surprised when something dropped out of the clouds.

The time was 9:35 p.m.

“I noticed a very bright white light approaching from the east,” he said. “I decided to take a closer look at it and I zoomed in.”

The strange, hovering light he captured on video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgVWJ1vWen8) seemed to throb as it flew closer. Ashley’s video moves from lack of a tripod, but the object seemed to creep closer during the seven-minute recording.

“I soon realized that this was not a normal object,” he said. “It was pure white, pulsating … After a few seconds of travelling in a level direction it suddenly, and without warning, dropped down.”

At one point, the object almost disappeared into a cloud before dropping below it.

“When it emerged from out underneath the cloud it had gotten bigger but was still … traveling at an angle, then stopped stationery and flashed out several times,” Ashley said. “It then moved off again.”

The light hovered a few more minutes until it disappeared.

“During the course of me filming it, it gave off an orangey-red glow a few times, then completely disappeared,” Ashley said.

The object almost immediately dematerialized, then the video ends.

But this wasn’t the last unidentified flying object Ashley saw. Eleven days later, one appeared again.

“On July 1, I saw another alien spacecraft,” he said. “This was in the same place as the first object and was similar but not the same. I filmed this object for 20 minutes.”

Although already a firm believer in UFOs, the sightings gave Ashley something he’d never had – proof. But, they also brought more questions.

Ashley, considering the light might be something manmade, contacted people who might be able to explain the light in his videos. An American company expressed interest and asked to see the video.

“I had all the footage from my first video put onto a second video and sent it all the way across the Atlantic to America,” Ashley said.

He sent his video to a company in Lampasas, Texas, with the understanding the footage might make it onto a television program. He never heard from the company again.

“Disappointingly and annoyingly they never bothered to respond on what they thought of the footage,” he said.

Ashley’s sightings may be more common than not. Worldwide, eyewitnesses report about 70,000 UFOs yearly, according to the Mutual UFO Network, a UFO research organization. The reports range from lights to physical craft to alien contact, and there’s no way to gauge how many sightings aren’t reported.

Although Ashley is sure he saw something not of this world, he also realizes there could be a terrestrial explanation. Either way, he’s happy he saw the lights in the sky.

“I have always believed in UFOS and their existence,” Ashley said. “But never in my wildest dreams did I believe that I would actually see them myself. I count myself extremely fortunate and privileged to see them.”

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The house in South Euclid, Ohio, had been on Telhurst Road since the early years after World War I. It was a Sears Modern Home, a mail-order house popular before the Great Depression. Nobody lived in the house long, and, during the years of 1967 to 1975, Lisa Falour discovered why.

Repairs were seemingly endless; especially the roof. It always leaked. But what bothered Lisa’s family most was the cold.

“It was impossible to keep the place warm enough in winter, and Ohio winters by Lake Erie are deadly nasty,” she said. “The family room was the kitchen, as it was usually the only warm place in the whole house. Even when the living room chimney was lit, what little heat we had ran up the flue.”

The cold continued in Lisa’s bedroom; it was the coldest room in the house and she usually did her schoolwork in the kitchen.

“I spent quiet evenings at the kitchen table, doing my homework. It was impossible to study in (my room),” she said.

But from the kitchen, she could see unwelcomed visitors – black human shapes punched into the fabric of the dimly lighted dining room.

“I constantly saw shadow people walking around in the dining room while I sat at the kitchen table,” she said. ”They were normal sized and silent, and though usually out of the corner of my eye, when looked at straight, they would just quietly move on. It wasn’t a trick of the eye.”

When she turned on the dining room light, the brightness drove these shadows from the room.

“They annoyed me, but it’s hard to know what to do about such a thing,” Lisa said. “I spoke to my mother about the shadow people, and she just calmly said, ‘well, maybe the place is haunted. If they don’t hurt you, don’t worry about them too much.’”

But Lisa had other things to worry about. She also saw a door in the dining room – a door that wasn’t there.

“I repeatedly saw ‘another’ door,” Lisa said. “It may have been at another point in time, as the house was constantly worked on and changed. It was just slightly to one side of the ‘real’ door leading to the bathroom, cupboards, TV room, closet …”

But if her parents believed the house was haunted, Lisa never knew.

“You have to understand, ours was a typical family in denial. Very typical of the times,” she said. ”We just tended not to talk about ‘real issues.’ My father certainly was no believer in the supernatural, as far as I could tell.”

Visitors to the house never knew the things Lisa had seen, and were never told it was haunted, “just that it was creepy.” But every guest she brought home saw something in the house … something that shortened their stays. Lisa’s second husband saw it, too, in her old bedroom while she was sleeping.

“(He) heard a thing climbing the rickety old wooden stairs, then showing itself at my old bedroom door where we were sleeping,” she said. ”He was aghast, and angry at me for subjecting him to this.”

He couldn’t describe the thing in detail. He only said it was a huge creature “and utterly ghastly.” Lisa had heard the footsteps on the stairs while growing up in the house, but never saw what made them.

“I just always kept my eyes closed tight, but I used to hear it creep up the steps and stand at my door,” she said.

Lisa moved from the house on Telhurst Road when she turned 18, “and never lived there again.” She would stay with her parents on short visits, again seeing the shadows that walked in the dining room.

The house is no longer in Lisa’s family, which doesn’t bother her at all. She does, however, wonder if the new owners have experienced shadow people or the thing on the stairs.

“I never heard a sound from the shadow people, and didn’t feel particularly threatened, but I did feel uneasy and not happy they were there,” she said. “It made me not like the house. All I can say is the house was creepy.”

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Author’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on Mary Vincent who’s had more than one encounter with the unknown.

Everybody dreams. Some dreams are frightening, some are forgotten and some, like those of Mary Vincent of Kingston, Ontario, seem to predict the future.

Over the years, Mary’s dreams have given her a look at “the other side,” which she describes as just another dimension … a dimension eerily accessible to our own.

“This is something I don’t understand at all,” Mary said. “I have had dreams that took me to the other side … but involve a big yellow door.”

Beyond this door may be the future – Mary has seen the future in her dreams.

“I dreamt that I was standing in my brother’s yard in the country and it was night,” she said. “My brother and his family, including my mother, were chasing horses trying to keep them out of the garden. The property next door kept horses and they had broken down the fence. It was pandemonium.”

Mary stood there, in her dream, watching but not participating.

“The next morning I was telling my husband about my dream when I got a call from my mother,” Mary said. “She started with, ‘you should see what happened here last night.’”

Mary’s mother told her exactly what she had seen in her dream, “point by point.”

Can we have prophetic dreams? There are endless stories of people who didn’t go on a doomed airplane/passenger ship/automobile because of a dream; Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet, made eerily accurate predictions from a trance, and Nostradamus’ 452-year-old quatrains fascinate us today.

A Baylor University study showed 52 percent of people believe in prophetic dreams. Paranormal author Rosemary Ellen Guiley wrote in her book, “Dreamspeak: How To Understand the Messages in Your Dreams,” that we probably have more precognitive dreams than we realize. We’re simply not paying attention.

After the horse dream, Mary started paying attention. Her next dream took her across the Atlantic.

“I dreamt that I was on a dirt road in some country in Africa, riding in an open jeep,” she said. “There were other people on the jeep, all North Americans, but I didn’t seem to know them well.”

As the jeep sped down the road, Mary became more and more terrified as they approached a curve.

“Every time we came to a bend that there would be armed Africans jumping out ahead of us,” she said. “I felt two things primarily, fear and hunger. We were running because of some upheaval in the country and there had been some killings.”

Because of the intensity of the dream, Mary told her coworkers.

“I noticed one of the men staring at me with his mouth open,” she said. “He started telling me his daughter was in Africa and what I described was just what she had described having happened to her and the group she was with. He had lost contact with her for a few days and had contemplated going there.”

Mary, like the rest of her office, didn’t know the man’s daughter was in Africa.

“Being a private man, he had never mentioned anything to anyone,” she said.

Mary’s dreams also reach out to her neighbors. In a recent dream, she was in her bedroom – it wasn’t Mary’s bedroom, but it was in the dream.

“I heard somebody in the house,” she said. “I realized I was being robbed but I was too scared to go out of my room.”

She tried unsuccessfully to call 9-1-1 when she got a glimpse of the robber. He was about six-feet-tall, solidly built, had shoulder-length blonde hair and wore a blue plaid shirt.

“I didn’t think much more about this until a few days later a woman I walk my dog with once in awhile was telling me she had been robbed,” Mary said. “She said she was in her room sleeping and she had heard them but was too frightened to confront them.”

The thief took her purse and her car, but the description of the incident struck Mary.

“I realized it was my dream and I described the man I had seen,” Mary said. “She said she had seen the same man I described hanging around her street a few days before.”

Are precognitive dreams real? No one knows, but if your dreams are particularly vivid, it might be wise to pay attention.

“These dreams were strange because they were explicit,” she said. “They didn’t go off to strange things, or other fantasies, they stayed right on target and were crystal clear. I never had to try and remember them, they were right there.”

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

About Me

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author, college journalism instructor, and fan of all things strange. His books include the novel, "A Funeral Story," the parody survival book, "How to Kill Monsters Using Common Household Items," the humorous travelogue, "Across a Corn-Swept Land," and four books about the paranormal, "Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters," "What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal In Your Backyard," "Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us," and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri's Most Spirited Spots.” All are available at www.amazon.com.
Jason is available for interviews, speaking engagements and beer festivals. E-mail all serious inquiries to: sjasonoffutt@gmail.com.